This Giving Tuesday, Focus on Your Three Feet of Influence

In just a few days, millions of people around the world will donate to nonprofits as a part of Giving Tuesday, an extraordinary holiday that encourages charitable giving and celebrates our collective philanthropic spirit. While preparing for Giving Tuesday and the holiday season, I keep coming back to a story told to me by my friend, Greg Ellison, a professor of Theology at Emory University. When Greg was young, he asked his aunt how he could change the world. She replied that she didn’t have an answer to that question, but that we all have the ability to impact the “three feet around us.”

According to this principle, while few have the power to affect change on a global scale, everyone has the power to positively affect the people they encounter by treating them with respect, compassion, and humility. This has rung true in my experience, and in my view, this idea can be taken further. It also means that we must find our own ways to make a difference in the issues that are close to our hearts and our homes. There is a profound fulfillment in bringing our own resources and strengths to the table to solve the difficult challenges that we encounter in our daily lives.

The customers and team members that make up our Chick-fil-A community represent a cross-section of people from different backgrounds working through their own challenges. We see our own three feet of influence across the checkout counter and in our team meetings. And at the Chick-fil-A Foundation, we are grateful to have the opportunity to play a part in helping our neighbors and promoting positive change on a number of fronts.

For us, this starts with helping our team members pursue their career goals and receive a quality education. Through our Remarkable Futures initiative, we provide scholarships and educational assistance to Chick-fil-A restaurant team members. In 2018, we invested over $14.5 million in scholarships for over 5,700 team members and partnered with over 100 colleges and universities to offer tuition discounts. Beyond this, we devote the Foundation’s resources to making an impact in the communities where we live and serve every day. Much of these efforts have been focused on helping young people around the U.S. reach their full potential through programs in entrepreneurship, leadership, and K-12 education.

We also believe in empowering members of our Chick-fil-A family to make an impact in their neighborhoods by supporting causes they are passionate about. One way we accomplish this is through our True Inspiration Awards -- grants to nonprofit organizations making a difference in their respective fields across the nation.

This Giving Tuesday, we will announce our 2019 True Inspiration Award winners, renewing our commitment to help members of the Chick-fil-A family nationwide make a difference in their three feet of influence. As in years past, many of these award recipients will be organizations making an impact on our goals in helping young people. And each year, some of the recipients are regional organizations in wider variety of fields that have been nominated by operators of our restaurants and voted on by customers, using our Chick-fil-A One app.

The True Inspiration Awards enable us to support a diverse collection of nonprofit groups spread out across the U.S. that are helping their neighborhoods in their own ways. For instance, one award recipient in 2018 was The Road Home, an organization that operates homeless shelters and works with people to find them more permanent housing in Salt Lake County in Utah. Another 2018 award winner was For Pete’s Sake Cancer Respite Foundation, which provides vacation experiences to cancer patients and their families in Pennsylvania and New York.  Each of these organizations – along with the rest of the 2018 True Inspiration Award winners – is making a positive and measurable impact in their own backyard.

We all have the capacity to bring about positive change in the communities where we live and work. And we’re coming up on a perfect opportunity to exercise that capacity. Thanksgiving represents a time of reflection and coming together. Giving Tuesday is a day for us to channel our festive spirit of warmth and generosity into community impact, before we get swept up in the rush of holiday festivities.

This impact is already being felt around the world; Giving Tuesday raised over $300 million in donations last year, up from $10 million in its inaugural year of 2012. I’m looking forward to seeing how we come together to make a difference in 2018.

The best gift you can give this Giving Tuesday and throughout the holiday season is one we all have the means to give -- the gift of positive change. So, as you make your holiday to-do list, I urge you to figure out where your time and resources are needed and get to work. Together, we can make all the difference in our three feet of influence – and the world.

?Giving Tuesday is November 27, 2018